Lack of standards are damaging waste sector - Peter Jones

Uncertainty over feedstock security and quality is holding up critical investment in new waste facilities, according to leading industry expert Peter Jones.

Peter Jones is calling on the Government to provide more certainty for investors

Jones believes the industry is badly in need of a recognised quality standard for waste-derived fuels and secondary materials if it is to boost investor confidence in its technologies and processes.

In an exclusive interview with edieWaste, he said that the Government's review of its proposed MRF code of practice needed urgent priorisation - it has suffered continued delays, despite promises from Defra that it would be published last autumn.

"What's holding up the waste industry investment is guarantees around feedstock security and quality. The sooner we get a standard for waste fuels to a BS-type classification, the better. Then we will get a futures markets and customers will know what they are getting," Jones said.

He maintained that the sector needed to present a united front on the issues of waste standards. "It is in everybody's interest ... the industry does spend a lot of time fighting within its own boundaries on the merits of different technologies and logistics systems.

"If we can get those feedstock standards going into different exit routes that would be a massive breakthrough, and after that it would be an open market environment."

Jones added that the outcomes of the review "could be quite interesting" if the code imposes input and output mass balances on waste facilities. "As you move to those type of standards, you then open yourself up to international competition - there are German buyers of refuse-derived fuels here at the moment prepared to buy up supplies."